Agrani Bank intake test postponed over question leak

Chairman of Agrani Bank recruitment test committee for the post of senior officers said Friday night that they would not cancel the first phase examination despite allegation of question leak and would set fresh date for the second phase.‘We postponed the second phase of recruitment test because we do not want to take any risk…examination of the first phase will stay valid. Date for the second phase will be announced later,’ said Abu Taleb, chairman of Dhaka University’s banking and insurance department who was responsible for controlling the test. The allegations of question leak surfaced Thursday night, with many of the candidates, especially at public university dormitories, claiming to have seen both printed and handwritten versions of the questions and their answers before the test started. Some of the ‘leaked’ questions were also seen on facebook.Amid the allegations, the second phase of recruitment test was postponed on Friday when the question and answer available matched with the questioner of the first phase of the exam that took place in the morning.Contacted over the issue, Taleb neither believed the allegation of question leak nor called for any impartial investigation into the allegation.‘You can go after the allegation. There was allegation of question paper leak in Janata Bank recruitment test but later it was found false. There is a group who always try to raise such allegation to foil fair examination,’ he claimed.Banking and insurance department of Dhaka University was given the responsibility to hold the recruitment tests of 2,00,000 applicants.A high official of Bangladesh Bank’s Bankers’ Selection Committee Secretariat told New Age on Friday that the DU department would have to take responsibility for the question leak as the central bank outsourced the recruitment examinations to the DU department.The central bank selected the DU department in accordance with the result of an open tender.The official said, ‘The DU department is yet to decide the cancellation of the first phase recruitment test. The central bank will ask the department to cancel the first phase exam if it does not cancel the exam.’Fourteen managing directors of the state-run scheduled banks and specialised banks are members of the Bankers’ Selection Committee Secretariat where the central bank’s governor plays role as chairman.The central bank is now doing secretarial duty to organise the recruitment tests of the state-run scheduled banks and specialised bank as the banks earlier were involved in irregularities to recruit their staff. The central bank may decide not to invite the DU department to join the open tender again if the department fails to organise the exam properly, the officials said.The second phase was scheduled to start at 3:30pm on Friday, and the first phase was held between 10:00am and 11:00am earlier on the day.Despite repeated attempts, Agrani Bank managing director and chief executive officer Mohammad Shams-Ul Islam could not be reached over mobile phone.No police investigation was initiated over the allegation of leak, said Shahbagh police officer-in-charge Abul Hasan. Earlier, similar allegations were raised during Janata Bank’s recruitment test, which was held on April 21, for its executive officer position.